Checking your MD5SUM

Before you attempt installing Sabayon (or any Linux distro for that matter) you should check your md5sum. "What on earth is that!?" you may ask. Well, md5sum is an ingenious algorithm which, when you run a string of data through it, will spit out a string of letters and numbers. This string will be totally and completely unique to that data. So in our case, we want to create an md5sum of the Sabayon LiveCD or LiveDVD .iso file.

Why should I go through all the trouble?

Well, when the developers create the master .iso from which all the other .iso's will be copied and distributed the developers calculate an md5sum of that .iso. They then post the results of the md5sum in the release notes. This is so you can verify if the .iso you have downloaded has not been tampered with, or has downloaded correctly.

MANY installation error are a result of folks not checking their md5sums before trying to install. Hey folks, entropy is real! Sometimes bits of a file get lost in the shuffle. Make sure your .iso file is 100% there.

So how on earth do I check this vaunted md5sum.

In Linux it could not be easier:

md5sum /path/to/file.iso

You can then compare the outcome with the official, posted md5sum to verify that you have EXACTLY the same file as lxnay created!

Remember to also verify the integrity of the LiveCD/DVD once you have burned it, to make sure that your burner didn't make any boo boos. The procedure for verifying the integrity of a LiveCD/DVD is given on the following Wiki page:

Installation

Live CD Display is Compressed or Partially Viewable

When booting from the LiveCD/DVD and your display is extremely small resolution or appears to be compressed or partially viewable try booting with the following command line option:
res=1024x768
This will give you a resolution of 1024 by 768. If you need a different resolution just change the height and width to that which you require.

Useful aliases

I have gathered information from a few sources to come up with a useful list of aliases that users may want to put into their environment.

Revdep-Rebuild Woes?

Note: Revdep-Rebuild is not for Entropy systems, only for Portage. Entropy users must NEVER run this command.

In my travels of Sabayon I have come across many who have let their packages get all too out of date for a revdep-rebuild to fix. I've prepared a short script here which overrides the old revdep-rebuild with an optional update feature. You can either keep this somewhere independant of revdep-rebuild, or replace revdep-rebuild with it - it should be able to stand on its own. Look here if there's anything you'd like to know or ask about.

Editing text files as root

Some people like to have an "Edit as root" for text files in right click menu.
The way for do this for konqueror is create a file ended in .desktop (example: kwrite.desktop) in /usr/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus/ with the following code inside:

Tells what kind of files will be afected by this menu entry. In this case, all text files. You can open kcontrol and take a look in KDE components, file associations for see what you can add. For example, if you want to add also .desktop files (like the one we are creating!), the line will be ServiceTypes=text/*,application/x-desktop

X-KDE-Priority=TopLevel

With this line, you will see "Edit as root" when you do right click. Without that line you will see the option under submenu actions.

Now just reboot your computer and you should have back/forward mouse button functionality in Dolphin and Konqueror.
This, of course can also work when running a different Desktop Environment. eg. XFCE.

Some like the XFCE looks and feel, but mainly use KDE apps.
In this case, add the xbindkeys.desktop script to XFCE-settings --> session and startup.
(Make sure you enable the KDE-services under the Advanced tab.)

terminal reverse search

Terminal power users already know that a log of all the commands you execute are kept in history. (Go ahead, type history to see them.)

Well, you can also search your command history as you type, using the very useful Ctrl+R key combination.

In the terminal, hold down Ctrl and press R to invoke "reverse-i-search." Type a letter - like s - and you'll get a match for the most recent command in your history that starts with s. Keep typing to narrow your match. When you hit the jackpot, press Enter to execute the suggested command.

Also, !characters will execute the last command that matches the specified characters. (So !ssh will run the last ssh you used.)

Of course good history search only works if you've got a long history. To extend the length of the history list in your terminal, add the following lines to your .bash_profile:

HISTFILESIZE=1000000000 HISTSIZE=1000000

Once you've got your history built up, you can use this command to see what items you type in the terminal the most. (Great way to decide what aliases you need to set up.)

The result will be a list of commands you've issued ordered by frequency. This is a fabulous way to identify what commands could use a shorter alias; for example, if I type ssh mylongservername.com 20 times a day, it's worth setting up an alias like sshg to get that done in fewer keystrokes.

alternative KDE task-manager

If you have got many tasks in your task-manager you should consider using Smooth-tasks.

This alternative task-manager allows you to just display the icons of a task thus using less space but still maintaining the ability of the user to distinguish the different tasks.

Install smooth-tasks from Entropy.

After installing and substituting it with the original task-manager, you should have a deep look at the settings since they are much broader.

One way of using the features of smooth-tasks could be to only display the icons of tasks and move the panel to the left or right of the screen. This is most useful on widescreens.

caution:

for those of you who use KDE and will be upgrading to KDE 4.8.0 when it becomes available in Entropy:
If you're using the smooth-tasks widget, it seems that it does not work in KDE 4.8.0
However, there is a widget called Icon-Only Task Manager which does basically the same thing. So use that instead.
When using Desktop-effects, rather than Compiz, you have to untick 'Highlight Window' (Kickoff > System Settings > Desktop Effects | 'All Effects' tab), otherwise, when you hover the mouse pointer over the icon on the Panel of a minimised window, both the window preview and the window itself are displayed while the mouse pointer is over the icon.

Install standalone fonts downloaded from the Internet

If you downloaded some fonts as standalone files (ie. somefont.ttf) you can install them in 2 ways. If you want to install them for the current user only follow these steps:

# cp somefont.ttf ~/.fonts/
# cd ~/.fonts
# fc-cache

If ~/.fonts does not exists, just create it.

If you want to set the fonts up for the whole system and all the users, copy all of them in /usr/share/fonts/ and run the fc-cache command there as root.

How to change menu icon in Razor-Qt

When using Razor-qt you'll find that you can't change the menu icon like we can in KDE.

However, there is still a way to change the default icon into our nice looking Sabayon "foot" logo. :-)
or whatever image you like.

For this to work, we need the commandline, a image editor, and a custom image.

So first we will need to make an image that will work with the main menu.

Next we will edit the image. You can use your preferred image editor, but in this example i will use Gimp.

In Gimp, when the image is loaded, Go to Image >> Scale Image.

Under image size make sure the width and height both are 64.

If you put 64 in one and the other changes click on the chain to the right.

Next, click File>Save As... and change the name to: mainmenu.png

Then click on: Select File Type (By Extension) and scroll down to .png and save it in your home directory or wherever you like.

Now we need to backup the existing menu image.
Open the terminal, and become root by entering "su", followed with the "root" password.
backup the existing menu image: